environmental justice – The GW Point Source

January 28, 2025February 10, 2025

Galamsey and the Struggle for Ghana’s Future: Environmental Degradation and the Resistance Movement

Benedicta Osei-Boateng

Photo Credit: Ruth McDowall, featured in Detecting Gold Mining in Ghana, NASA Landsat Image Gallery.

The West African nation of Ghana is endowed with natural resources such as water, forests, and substantial deposits of high-value minerals including gold, diamonds, bauxite, and manganese. As a tropical country, Ghana enjoys a significant amount of sunshine to support the development of solar power. It also has an ample wind system and biomass base. Taken together, these renewable and nonrenewable resources make Ghana a resource-rich nation.

As is the case with most countries that abound with natural resources, in recent years Ghana has seen a dramatic rise in the deterioration of its natural resources primarily caused by small and medium-scale artisanal mining, popularly called “galamsey.” The term is a corrupted version of two words “gather and sell,” which connote the gathering and selling of gold. This practice has led to environmental degradation, land and water resource depletion, health hazards for miners, and social and economic impacts.[1] There is also medical evidence suggesting that galamsey activities have resulted in new health challenges including neonatal defects that are traceable to unregulated heavy metals like arsenic and mercury that have found their way into groundwater systems through illegal alluvial mining.

January 28, 2025February 11, 2025

Climate Change and Human Mobility: The Urban Challenge of Climate Displacement in Colombia

Laura Serna Mosquera

Photo credit: Climate Refugees

Climate change has become one of the most significant drivers of human mobility worldwide, forcing millions to leave their homes. The Groundswell report by the World Bank predicts that by 2050, 216 million people could be internally displaced due to climate-related factors. Similarly, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center recorded 26.4 million new displacements caused by disasters in 2023 alone.^[1]

October 28, 2024February 11, 2025

Health Equity Policy & Advocacy Clinic – Environmental Justice Division Students Address Lead Poisoning Threats to Children

The Health Equity Policy & Advocacy Clinic – Environmental Justice (EJ) Division’s students Anna Aguilar, Sidney Lee, Jaylah Richie, and Emma Stinson successfully drafted and submitted comments to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on behalf of 20 organizations, associations, and individuals. The comments respond to the lowering of the definition of elevated blood lead level (EBLL) in the Lead Safe Housing Rule (LSHR) to match the current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) blood lead reference value. The Clinic’s submission combines environmental justice, housing justice, and health equity principles and standards to argue for the protection of children from lead hazards. Specifically, the Clinic pointed out HUD’s significant delay in adopting the CDC reference value and urged HUD to engage in primary prevention to protect vulnerable children from lead poisoning and its permanent harm.

The students conducted legal and public health research and analysis, and stakeholder outreach activities. To prepare the comments, they answered administrative law questions, analyzed statutory language, reviewed scientific data, reached out to experts, created fact sheets, and collaborated with the Clinic’s partner organizations to review their findings and receive feedback. The students also alerted nonprofits and encouraged submissions that urged HUD to follow health-based and environmental justice best practices. The students’ outreach prompted many organizations to join their comment or send in their own comment that incorporated the Clinic comment by reference. In addition, GW Law and Medical School student groups joined the comment.

June 21, 2024October 3, 2024

Public Engagement in Categorical Exclusions Under NEPA

By Patrick Seroogy

Photo credit: Matt Hecht

Public participation and environmental justice are fundamental to environmental law. The former has been a pillar since the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970, which established a federal environmental review framework and enabled members of the public to meaningfully engage in the decision-making process on projects whose adverse environmental impacts may affect them. The latter is the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in agency decision-making, with a focus on communities that have historically been disproportionately burdened with adverse human health and environmental risks and hazards. Categorical exclusions (CEs) are actions that are exempted from complicated environmental review under the NEPA process because they are not meant to produce significant environmental impacts.

March 22, 2024April 10, 2024

Transboundary Climate Litigation in the “Global Neighborhood”: An Interview with Andrea Tang

By Fiorella Valladares Meneses

Photo credit: INDECI

Climate change is one of the most pressing and complex challenges of our time, affecting people and ecosystems around the world. As the impacts of climate change become increasingly apparent, individuals and organizations are turning to legal action as a means of promoting environmental justice.